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<p>Automatic enrolment was designed to increase the number of people saving for their
retirement, and has been a great success to date. By the end of September 2017, over
8.7 million people had been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension – this
included 523,000 people in Scotland</p><p> </p><p>We do want to encourage people to
save more than the minimum, but we need to balance this with the fact that many people
are not saving anything and contributing to a pension will be new to them. We also
recognise that employers needed time to adjust so as to implement the reforms, and
to help manage their costs. As such, our focus is on increasing the number of people
saving and increasing contributions gradually over the next two years. For an individual,
these are currently at 1 per cent, rising to 3 per cent in April 2018 and 5 per cent
in April 2019</p><p> </p><p>We are currently undertaking a review of the policy and
operation of automatic enrolment. This includes looking at the existing coverage of
the policy; strengthening the evidence base concerning future contributions and how
to improve individuals’ engagement with workplace pension saving so as to maximise
saving for their retirement. The review work is led by a DWP team and supported by
an external advisory group. We will report to Parliament by the end of 2017.</p>
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